Either yesterday was seen as a good day to bury embarrassing news by the Government or else journalists found some stories capable of  reinforcing the idea that despite the move of Maria Miller, that the Government has still not understood the outrage felt by many of us. Late yesterday evening, the BBC reported that G4S and SERCO are once again eligible to bid for Government contracts, despite their previous poor/mal practice overcharging for services.

Many people believe that overcharging for contracts in the way that SERCO and G4S did, or over-claiming for mortgage costs is theft, pure and simple. This is why some believe that Maria Miller got away lightly with the loss of her Cabinet seat. However as terrible for taxpayers to discover their money has been stolen by people such as Maria Miller and colleagues, or corporations such as SERCO and G4S, there may be a more disturbing concern. If SERCO and G4S were so wilful in their dealings with the state, that they concocted lists of people who had died or been released without needing a tag, to bill the State for, then many heads must roll and that does not appear to have happened. However if they were so disorganised that they were over claiming in error, what confidence can we have that they won’t let people go who should be tagged in the future. By the same token if Government Ministers, people whose decisions have such a fundamental impact on our lives can overlook their own mortgage payments or fail to read the rules that they have voted on, what impact could this same sloppy behaviour have on their Ministerial decision making?

One of the issues I have written about previously is the obsession by Government Ministers and their advisers, with large scale contracts. Despite a commitment to procure 25% of services from SME’s (Small to Medium Sized Enterprises), the outcome may not have the impact many would expect. In the first instance the definition of a SME is that it has a turnover of less than £50M and less than 250 members of staff, not necessarily a small business! Secondly some procurement is bound to need to take place with small(er) businesses where these organisations have a niche specialism, such as high tech companies. One of the comments I have heard from someone close to Government procurement in the context of G4S and SERCO was that the Government was bound to make the decision that was announced yesterday. This is because there are no other private sector organisations that can fill the gap created by the loss of these two monsters. A classic case is the failure of G4S in the 2012 Olympics. In a competitive market, one might assume that there were plenty of alternatives. In fact the Army were the only agency capable of stepping in. I recently saw an interview with an entrepreneur who had devised a tagging anklet that would be much cheaper for the Government than the items offered by their current contractors. However the business owner was prevented from even having her product tested by the Government due to the states own costly and inflexible processes. Yet despite this her tags were in use in several US states and had been successfully trialled by several British Police Forces.

This morning we are hearing that the Government has invested half a Billion pounds on stocks of Tami Flu, yet they have purchased something for a mass inoculation that would have kept none of us out of hospital and reduced our experience of symptons by only half a day on average. This is another example of poor procurement, once again from a large company that has a close relationship with Government Ministers.

There are no simple solutions to these failures of process and policy. However reducing the barriers to public office so that Independent Candidates can stand against Party Candidates on a level playing field, would certainly reduce the sense of a closed culture where long standing poor practice from the past is allowed to continue unchallenged. Equally reducing the barriers to public procurement would ensure that not only does the Government adjust its processes to cope with smaller businesses, but perhaps the next Government could set itself an even more ambitious target? One of the problems is that at present, the Government measures three categories of business as though they were the same. If it began to measure the levels of business awarded to medium, small and micro businesses as separate categories, then future Governments could set targets for its procurement based on each of the categories. It has long been shown that the most effective sector at increasing employment is the micro and small businesses. It is clear that cultural change will take time, but we cannot continue to treat G4S and SERCO as the only game in town, any more than we can tolerate the exploitation of MP expense rules.